Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Deafknife - "VI ER DØDE" [2012]

Artist: Deafknife
Title: VI ER DØDE
Genre: Post-Black Metal
Country: Russia
Release date: 2012

Track List:
  1. Kings Don't Reign Forever
  2. Catchers Of Forgotten Voices
  3. Urfin Joos
  4. To The Stars
  5. Shape
  6. Flock
  7. Void
  8. The Wall
  9. Blood & Ice
Finally, a long-awaited full-length album from this Siberian post-hardcore/black metal band, which turned out to be a total masterpiece - easily the best ex-USSR metal release of 2012. Now I have two favourite Russian metal releases of all times - "Planeshift" by Rakoth, and this one. What's interesting - both Rakoth and Deaknife have their roots in black metal scene, but the final result is relatively far from "true" black metal (in terms of both sound and lyrics/ideology). "VI ER DØDE" LP mostly consists of remastered songs from their early demos, with improved quality of recording. However, I still think the demo version of "Kings Don't Reign Forever" is better:

The "Lovecraftian" atmosphere of their early demos is almost completely gone, and replaced with the rebellious spirit of (post-)punk/hardcore which strangely goes well with the overall depressive mood of the album. The lyrics are great too, I can try to translate some of them into English if you want. Overall, an awesome release, definitely recommened if you like Amesoeurs, An Autumn For Crippled Children, and post-metal/shoegaze in general. I'll certainly buy it on CD at first opportunity, such a band surely deserves to be supported.


P.S. For those who don't know: Urfin Joos is a character in a very popular series of fantasy novels by Alexander Volkov. The books are loosely based on F.Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" (see here for more info). Urfin Joos is probably the most popular character in the whole series - a charismatic and misanthropic dictator in the earlier books, and a reclusive farmer/amateur astronomer (no longer a villain) in the later ones.

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